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Climate justice and the
politics of scalePatrick Bond
University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Development Studies and
Centre for Civil Society, Durban
presented to the Antipode Institute for Geographies of JusticeAntipode Institute for Geographies of Justice
University of Georgia, Athens31 May, 2011
cartoons by Zapiro
Durban’s Conference of Polluters (COP17)what will happen from 28 Nov until 9 Dec?
UNFCCC negotiations
UN & Durban officials want‘civilised’ society in (closed)
Exhibition Centre
‘C17’ civ soc unity at public alternative summit: Durban
University of Technology
last time SA hosted global environment conference: WSSD
World Summit on Sustainable Development Johannesburg, 31 August 2002: 30,000 protested
UN ‘type-two partnerships’, privatisation of water, emissions trading, neoliberalism
‘overaccumulation’ and GDP stagnation:
source of decline in finance-adjusted US profits
US corporate profits derived much less from manufacturing products;much greater sources of profits came from abroad;profits also came more from returns on financial assets.Source: Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy
crisis of surplus value extraction
‘temporal fix’
‘spatial fix’
context: US economy as core site of overaccumulation and financialisation
when crisis sets in, 3 displacement techniques:
‘shifting’, ‘stalling’, ‘stealing’
the spatial fix, temporal fix and
accumulation by dispossession
Source: John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, 2009
Financial profits
as % of total profits
limits of the ‘spatial fix’: amplified uneven development
volatility and uneven
development inexorably
worsen(source: Unctad 2009)
limits of ‘temporal fix’: uncontrolled financial markets
Source: IMF, Global Financial Stability Report, April 2010
‘global governance’ solutions to world crises?recent record: repeated top-down failures
• last solution: 1987 Montreal Protocol on CFCs (ozone hole)
but since then:• dominant neoliberals (1990s), neoconservatives (2000s)• World Bank, IMF Annual Meetings: trivial reforms(Chinese voting power rising a few %, African stagnant)• ‘Post-Washington Consensus’: Stiglitz fired, 1999• ‘Post-Washington Consensus’: Stiglitz fired, 1999• UN Millennium Development Goal rhetoric, 2000• WTO Doha Agenda 2001: failure• Monterrery Financing for Development summit, 2002, then G20 global financial reregulation, 2008-09: failure• renewed wars in Central Asia, Middle East, N.Africa• UN Security Council reform attempts failed, 2005• G8 aid promises (especially for Africa) broken, 2005• Kyoto Protocol on climate: Copenhagen Accord tragedy
Copenhagen Accord, COP 15, December 2009
• Jacob Zuma (SA)• Lula da Silva (Brazil)• Barack Obama (USA)• Wen Jiabao (China)
• Manmohan Singh (India)
lead US climate negotiator Todd Stern, on demand for recognising climate debt?
'The sense of guilt or 'The sense of guilt or culpability or reparations culpability or reparations
–– I just categoricallyI just categorically
reject thatreject that''Stern thus rejects core
Maldives cabinet gets$50m in US aid = U-turn, to support Copenhagen
Stern thus rejects coreprinciple: ‘polluter pays’
is Stern welcome in Durban?WikiLeaks revealed
(Feb ‘10) Stern/Pershingbribery and bullying:
Ethiopia, Maldives, Bolivia, Ecuador
Ethiopian tyrantMeles Zenawi: UN Advisory Group on Finance cochairhalved AU’s 2009 demands for climate debt
who loses from climate change?a ‘Climate Demography Vulnerability Index’
main losers: Central America, Central America,
central South America,
the Arabian Peninsula,
Southeast Asia and
much of Africa
Green Climate Fund – $100bn/year by 2020designed last month in Mexico City• $100 billion isn’t enough!• direct access? ‘Basic Income Grants’ preferable to existing ‘aid’ systems (but Manuel is opposed)
Trevor Manuel SA minister, GCF co-chair
(but Manuel is opposed)• carbon trade will provide up to 50% of Fund revenue• World Bank is interim trustee despite terrible record of managing climate and development funding
Robert ZoellickWorld Bank president
the World Bankbe lead climate financier?• fossil fuel loans: $6.3 billion in 2009-10 year, up from $1.6 bn in 2006-07;
• commodity export dogma;• resource curse financing;• carbon trading promotion;• Robert Zoellick qualifications:
-WB prez after Wolfowitz was fired. ..
ShouldRobert
Zoellick
-WB prez after Wolfowitz was fired-Goldman Sachs int’l banker, 2006-7-US State Dep’t #2, 2005-6-US Trade Rep to WTO, 2001-5-Bush Jr’s Florida vote-counter, 2000-Enron ‘senior political advisor’, 1999-neocon Project for a New American Century founder, 1998 (‘invade Iraq’)-Fannie Mae #2, 1993-98 -Presidential deputy chief of staff to George Bush Sr, 1992-US Treasury: Deputy Assistant Secretary during S&L crash, 1980s
. ..
breaks .
everything he touches
a very worried panda
instead of paying its climate debt, US plays
pollution marketsDATE: December 12, 1991TO: DistributionFR: Lawrence H. Summers
... I think the economic logic behind ... I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that… I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted. (emphasis added)
(World Bank chief economist Larry Summers, later US Treasury Secretary and Obama’s economic manager – full memo: www.whirledbank.org)
Cancun COP 16 revived market fix
in theory, yes, as a ‘castle in the sky’… but in reality relying upon carbon markets is like building that castle building that castle atop quicksand –given the market’s corruption, fraud, thievery, stagnation and speculation
carbon trading gimmick:US vice-president Al Gore (later a
carbon trader) pushed for Kyoto to include emissions markets,
in exchange for Washington’s promised support …
in exchange for Washington’s promised support … promise soon broken
Gore: ‘The European Union has adopted this US innovation and is making it work effectively there.’
(An Inconvenient Truth, p. 252)
emissions market’s five major crashes, 2006-09, 2010 stagnation, 2011 theft-closure, 2012 denouement?
impossible to finance renewable impossible to finance renewable energy with such low carbon pricesenergy with such low carbon prices
does EU carbon trading ‘work effectively’?
alien-invasive trees grow 10
Plantar’s ‘green desert’timber plantation
how does carbon trading look in the South?
alien-invasive trees grow 10 years, then die and become
charcoal for pig-iron, for Brazilian auto industry
Clean Development Mechanism case studies
Mt Elgon (Uganda) villagers stand amid corn planted on what the
government says is national park, but which they claim has belonged to them
for generations. To plant the corn, the villagers chopped down trees planted
by the Dutch FACE Foundation as part of a carbon trading project.
Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and forest Degradation
REDD-type projects have already caused land grabs, killings, violent evictions and forced displacement, violent evictions and forced displacement, violations of human rights, threats to cultural survival, militarization and servitude- Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network
Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and forest Degradation
CJ critiques of REDD reforms:- no chance of getting full Indigenous rights (e.g. free, prior and informed consent)- no chance to keep REDD - no chance to keep REDD out of carbon markets & offsets- no chance to win on definitional issues (plantations)- highly divisive within indigenous peoples, Africa (e.g. Wangari Maathei is supporter)
Bisasar Roadconversion of
methane-to-electricity at environmentally-
racist toxic dump
Africa’s largest landfill placed in black residential
Durban, South Africa: $15 million CDM pilot
Africa’s largest landfill placed in black residential suburb (Clare Estate) by apartheid; municipality
refused to close it thanks to World Bank 2002
investment hype: Prototype Carbon Fund
creditsSajida Khan’s family home
Sajida Khan (1952-2007)though felled by cancer from dump, she had co-hosted ‘Durban Group for Climate Justice’ (2004)
and her challenge to Bisasar methane flaring temporarily rebuffed World Bank in 2005
project went ahead in 2008-09 and currently CDM is paid just €14/tonne
in sum, eight fatal flaws of carbon trading• inventing property right to pollute is effectively ‘privatizing air’, a
moral dilemma given unprecedented inequality;
• GHGs have non-linear impact, not reducible to commodity exchange(a tonne of CO2 produced at ‘X’ not same as a tonne reduced at ‘Y’);
• corporations most guilty of pollution, and World Bank (most responsible for fossil fuel financing), are market’s driving forces;
• many offsets – e.g. monocultural timber plantations, forest ‘protection’, landfill methane-electricity – devastate local communities and ecologies;‘protection’, landfill methane-electricity – devastate local communities and ecologies;
• price of carbon in these markets is haywire, not least due to corruption, fraud and theft – with no prospect of regulation;
• dangerous potential for markets to become multi-trillion dollar speculative bubbles, similar to other exotic financial instruments;
• encourages small incremental shifts, distracting us from big changes needed across economy, energy, transport, consumption, disposal;
• ‘market solutions for market failure’ is not an appropriate ideology after the world’s worst-ever financial market failure
contested ‘climate justice’ semantics• environmental/racial justice traditions - 1980s
• ad hoc climate activism, 1997 Kyoto Protocol
• 2000s: Contraction&Convergence, GDRs (technicist)
• ‘Durban Group for Climate Justice’, 2004
• fusion of ‘global justice’ and radical enviros, Bali, 2007
• ‘Climate Justice Now!’, 2007-present
• Climate Justice Alliance (EU-based), Copenhagen, 2009
• Cochabamba conference ‘Rights of Mother Earth’, 2010
• Third World Network emphasis on South state power
• UN-DESA’s CJ orientation: South industrialisation
• Mary Robinson Foundation for CJ – elite reengagement
what is ‘climate justice’?core principles from Rights of Mother Earth
conference, Cochabamba, Bolivia (April 2010)
•50 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2017
•stabilising temperature rises to 1C and 300 Parts Per Million
•acknowledging the climate debtowed by developed countries•full respect for Human Rights and the inherent rights of indigenous people
Evo Morales
•full respect for Human Rights and the inherent rights of indigenous people
•universal declaration of Mother Earth rights to ensure harmony with nature
•establishment of an International Court of Climate Justice
•rejection of carbon markets, and REDD’s commodifed nature and forests•promotion of change in consumption patterns of developed countries
•end of intellectual property rights for climate technologies
•payment of 6 percent of developed countries’ GDP for climate change
CJ movement: leave the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole, the tarsand in the land,and the fracking shale-gas in our earth’s ass
• Niger Delta women, Environmental Rights Action, MEND halted majority of oil exploitation, 2008
• Canada: Alberta anti-tarsands green and indigenous activists, and Quebecois versus shale-gas
• British Climate Camp (Crude Awakening block Coryton oil refinery, 2010 – MI5 spy couldn’t crack it)
• Australian Rising Tide regularly block Newcastle coal exports
• Norwegian environmentalists and Attac win against state oil company in Lofoten region, 2011
• Ecuador’s Amazon indigenous activists + Accion Ecologica halt oil drilling in Yasuni National Park
• stopping US King Coal: Mountain Top Removal nearly halted in Appalachia; Navajo Nation forced • stopping US King Coal: Mountain Top Removal nearly halted in Appalachia; Navajo Nation forced cancellation of Black Meza (Arizona) mine permit against world’s largest coal company, Peabody; Powder River Basin (MN, WY) farmers and ranchers fight coal expansion
• derailing US coal energy: nearly all 151 proposed new coal power plants in Bush Energy Plan cancelled, abandoned or stalled since 2007; key community forces: Indigenous Environmental Network, Energy Justice Network and Western Mining Action Network, plus Sierra legal team
• preventing incinerators: since 2000, no new waste incinerators (more carbon-intensive than coal and leading source of cancer-causing dioxins)
– Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Detroit victory, world wastepickers movement
• defeating Chevron expansion in Richmond, CA
• undamming Mega Hydro at Klamath River: indigenous communities defeat Pacificorp Power
• building resilient communities through local action: frontline communities winning campaigns linking climate justice to basic survival
– e.g., Oakland Climate Action Coalition opposes climate disruption, promotes Just Transition
“The California Environmental Justice Movement stands with communities around the world in opposition to carbon trading and offset
California solidarity and prefigurative politics
Oakland:post-carbon transition town?
carbon trading and offset use and the continued overreliance on fossil fuels.”
California EJM’s Declaration against use of carbon trading to address climate change, 19 February 2008
Oakland Climate Action Coalition
agenda for CJ:
1. Transportation and Land Use
2. Energy and Water Use
3. Consumption and Solid Waste
4. Urban Agriculture and Forestry
5. Community Engagement
6. Climate Change
Adaptation Planning
scale politics: national/state laws?• genuine climate legislation would strengthen
democratic planning and regulatory mandates for national Environmental Protection Agency, public utility boards and planning commissions
• legislation would mandate profound transformation in production, consumption, transport, energy and disposal systemstransport, energy and disposal systems
• adverse balance of forces everywhere leaves existing legislation with private offsets, carbon trading, regulatory neutering (US EPA), carbon capture and storage, other false solutions, and massive subsidies for oil, coal, nuclear and corporate agriculture … (except for California breakthrough due to racial-justice court challenge)
introducing:Durban Group for
Climate Justice
• October 2004 initiative
• supported by Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Sweden
• driven by grassroots activists in • driven by grassroots activists in India, Brazil, Thailand, South Africa, etc
• largest signatory: Friends of the Earth International
• key sites: The Cornerhouse, FERN, SEEN, CarbonTrade Watch, CDM Watch, Dartmouth Univ Environmental Studies, UKZN Centre for Civil Society
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pbond@mail.ngo.zapbond@mail.ngo.za
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